////
When Liu Qiangdong was accompanying property overseas, he was also busy looking at property real estate, relying on huge properties and land reserves, and he was still grabbing business with international giants and Li Ka-shing.
Source: Wumian Caijing
The real estate market is in a bleak state.
Wanda, which originally planned to go public in Hong Kong, fell into trouble and started domestic debt restructuring; The first real estate company to be ordered to be liquidated by the High Court of Hong Kong appeared; Hundreds of billions of housing enterprises are about to be forced to delist...
Fortunately, a new phenomenon has emerged in the real estate segment.
On this side, on May 8, international logistics giant GLP said it planned to sell some of its assets in China to reduce debt levels.
On the other hand, Jingdong Sanfa, which is also in the logistics real estate track, is lining up to list and buying land and property in the domestic and international markets.
▲ Jingdong Sanfa shareholding structure, the picture comes from the company's prospectus.
On May 4, JD.com officially started the construction of the "Jingdong Youth City" project on the land it bought for 3 billion yuan, planning to build nearly 4,000 self-owned employee rental apartments, which caused a heated discussion.
Behind the arrogance of building a house for his brothers, Liu Qiangdong is gathering huge amounts of property and soil reserves through his Jingdong production and development, like a "hidden landlord".
The expansion is fierce, with overseas properties increasing 10 times in two years
For a long time, Liu Qiangdong frequently appeared overseas, as soon as he returned to China, he was on the hot search.
Previously, he not only accompanied the birth and took care of his wife overseas, but also explored overseas business and "buy, buy, buy" in the international market.
In late April, market sources said JD.com had spent 250 million pounds (about 2.143 billion yuan) to acquire Goldman Sachs' large logistics asset package in the UK, including office space, industrial plants and logistics warehousing space.
If the transaction is successful, the transaction amount will set a new record for Chinese investment in the UK this year.
The UK is an important position for JD. Back in October 2022, JD.com spent £44 million (about 368 million yuan, with a yield of 4.7%) to acquire a distribution center in the northern English city of Doncaster, one of the world's three largest retail companies, British supermarket chain Tesco.
On July 22, 2022, JD Sanfa spent about 60 million pounds (about 500 million yuan) to buy Milton Keynes' logistics warehouse, located in London Satellite City.
Cen Shen, head of JD.com Europe at JD.com, said: "The investment in the acquisition of the UK warehouse can bring strong rental returns and value-added potential, and we will continue to invest in high-quality assets in the UK and Europe in the coming years." ”
In addition to the United Kingdom, JD.com has also laid out Indonesia, the Netherlands, Vietnam and other places.
2021 and 2022 are two years of fierce action by JD Production. According to the prospectus of JD.com, as of the end of 2022, the total number of overseas properties of JD.com reached 679,000 square meters, nearly 10 times more than in 2020.
▲The number of properties of Jingdong Production, the picture is taken from the prospectus.
With the larger layout, JD.com's overseas income is higher. In terms of revenue, overseas receipts are surging, rising from 54.15 million in 2021 to about 178 million yuan.
▲Jingdong's production and development income, the picture is taken from the prospectus.
According to the prospectus, as of December 31, 2022, JD Sanfa has developed, owned or managed 219 logistics parks in 29 provincial-level administrative regions in China and 4 overseas countries, with a total area of more than 20 million square meters of completed properties, properties under development and land reserves.
Of course, China is still the main position of JD production and development. At present, the number of properties and land reserves in China is still the largest, as of the end of 2022, about 22.657 million square meters, and the number of projects totaling 211, compared to the total overseas area is still a "fraction".
According to the JLL report, as of December 31, 2022, JD Sanfa's total assets under management were RMB 93.7 billion, with a total construction area of more than 20 million square meters, ranking third in Asia and second in China in terms of construction area.
So far, Liu Qiangdong has firmly occupied the front row position of the logistics real estate industry.
▲ Jingdong has a number of listed companies, uncrowned financial mapping.
On March 30, JD.com went to Hong Kong to submit a listing application, and if successfully listed, Liu Qiangdong will sit on JD.com's fifth listed company. With the expansion of the capital territory, if Jingdong Technology and Jingdong Industry in the queue are also listed, the total market value of JD.com companies is close to one trillion.
Grab business with international giants and Li Ka-shing
In front of Jingdong Sanfa, there is an inescapable opponent - GLP GLP.
GLP China's head is Mei Zhiming, a Chinese-American.
JD.com, Alibaba, and Amazon were all customers of Mei Chi Minh, and when the Internet retail industry was surging, GLP, as a warehouse provider and service provider, frantically occupied the Chinese market and provided high-standard warehouses to these giants.
Along this development line, GLP has become the world's largest logistics real estate operator, with a large number of properties and land reserves at home and abroad.
In June 2019, a deal that had been nervous for a long time was finalized.
At that time, Blackstone invested $18.7 billion to acquire some GLP U.S. logistics assets, involving a total area of 179 million square feet (about 16.6 million square meters).
Interestingly, the underlying asset of this transaction was acquired by GLP from Blackstone in 2014.
In 2014, Mei Chi Ming took GLP to the U.S. market, co-invested with the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, and acquired Blackstone's largest industrial real estate fund IndCor, the nation's largest industrial real estate fund, for $8.1 billion.
It wasn't until 5 years later that Blackstone bought back the assets it sold, and GLP made a profit of tens of billions of dollars.
What Liu Qiangdong is doing is very similar to Mei Zhiming.
JD Logistics serves JD Logistics and is responsible for land acquisition, design, development and operation of logistics industrial parks.
In addition to expanding the scale, acquiring land and buying property everywhere, JD Sanfa is in line with the market, and its customers include BMW, Original Life, Good Shop, Yonghui Supermarket, etc.
The "charter" business is not the biggest cake of logistics giants, the bigger imagination is in the REIT (full name "Real Estate Investment Trust"), that is, the real estate investment trust track.
GLP REIT is one of the first public infrastructure REITs in China, and its underlying assets include GLP Beijing Airport Logistics Park, Tongzhou Opto-Mechanical and Electrical Logistics Park, Guangzhou Bonded Logistics Park, Zengcheng Logistics Park, Shunde Logistics Park, etc.
▲ Zhongjinpross REIT product structure diagram.
The Li Ka-shing family is also increasing the REIT market. ON MAY 9, CHEUNG JIANG'S BIDDING COMPANY PROPOSED A CASH TENDER OFFER FOR CIVITAS SOCIAL HOUSING PLC, A COMPANY LISTED ON THE LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE, TO ACQUIRE ALL ISSUED AND TO BE ISSUED SHARE CAPITAL, WITH A TRANSACTION VALUE EXPECTED TO EXCEED £485 MILLION (APPROXIMATELY HK$4.8 BILLION).
Today, Liu Qiangdong, along with the GLP Mei Chiming and Li Ka-shing families, stand in the REIT market.
In February this year, "Harvest JD Warehousing and Logistics Closed Infrastructure Securities Investment Fund" (hereinafter referred to as "JD Warehousing REIT") was released.
▲ Jingdong warehousing REIT has recently gone all the way down, the picture comes from Oriental Fortune Network.
This is the first private enterprise warehousing and logistics REIT, which is 100% owned by JD.com (JD Century Trading), with Harvest Fund, a member of Chinese Min's Insurance Group, as the public fund manager, and entrusted JD Sanfa (JD Donghong) as the operation and management institution.
The core assets are JD.com's three logistics parks in Langfang, Wuhan and Chongqing, with a total construction area of about 351,000 square meters and a total valuation of 1.565 billion yuan.
This is a good track, and JD.com's advantage is that it can use it to expand its scale and improve its supply chain. However, some investors questioned that JD.com has a strong dependence on the parent company, and from the perspective of REIT, early investment has the characteristics of stable returns, but in long-term development, there is a possibility of conflict of interest.
Years of real estate ambition finally landed
A long time ago, Liu Qiangdong wandered on the real estate track, undecided.
Large companies involved in the real estate business can easily attract attention from the outside world and be questioned for not doing business.
On the one hand, the real estate business needs a huge amount of capital to leverage, and large companies are eligible to enter; On the other hand, large companies can derive finance, logistics and other formats through real estate business.
The huge real estate market, like a tempting cake, is in front of their eyes.
This year, JD.com acquired a piece of land in Yizhuang, Beijing, for 3.1 billion yuan, saying the move was to build 4,000 employee rental apartments, not to sell houses.
Liu Qiangdong tried to enter the field of real estate development in the early days. As early as 2015, a company called Wuhan Chumeng Home Real Estate Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Chumeng Home") was registered, and Liu Qiangdong served as chairman and general manager.
In 2018, JD.com plans to build a central China regional headquarters base project in Wuhan Xinzhou District, and the project has entered the approval stage.
▲In July 2018, the planning permission for construction land for Wuhan project was approved.
Shortly after receiving approval, in April 2019, Liu Qiangdong withdrew from the company's list of directors and supervisors. At the same time, Wuhan Jingdong Century Trading Co., Ltd., which holds 100% of Chumeng Homestead, was withdrawn and transferred to Ningbo Meishan Bonded Port Area Haiyingna Investment Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Haiyingna Investment") wholly-owned by Ningbo Meishan Bonded Port Area. Haiyingna Investment is a subsidiary of Kunding Holdings and is not a JD.com company.
This project, the promotion name is "CITY Port" (previously known as "CITY ON" and "Xidi Port"), in various approval documents, the project is still named "Jingdong Wuhan Central China Regional Headquarters Base Project", the construction unit column is "Chu Meng Home", but there is no shadow of JD.com.
Until January, the completion registration of the Jingdong Wuhan Central China Regional Headquarters Base Project (CITY Port) was completed, in which the residential part was completed and the commercial part was still under construction.
In other words, this project follows the old path of real estate developers, relying on residential funds to return funds and additional commercial and office properties.
Presumably, under the trade-off, Liu Qiangdong saw that the water of real estate development was too deep, so he chose to leave the market.
In 2014, JD.com set its sights on the real estate Internet marketing business, but at that time, Liu Qiangdong looked not only at real estate marketing, but also at the financial market behind it. During Singles' Day that year, JD Finance launched marketing actions with real estate companies to test the real estate crowdfunding model.
During this period, many attempts have not made much progress.
Until 2017, JD.com officially established a real estate business department, and recruited Zeng Fuhu, former vice president of Sohu.com, as the general manager of the business department. Zeng Fuhu showed great ambition, and he issued a military order, saying that JD Real Estate would succeed or fail in five years. And to combine Jingdong payment, participate in the housing transaction link.
However, in the Jingdong system at that time, the status of the real estate business department was not high, and it was subordinate to the home life division of Jingdong Mall. During this period, JD Retail also proposed "JD real estate self-operation", but it still did not get rid of the "display display" model.
Now, the five-year period in Zeng Fuhu's mouth has arrived, and JD Real Estate does not seem to have stirred up a splash.
It was Jingdong that produced and developed, so that Liu Qiangdong's real estate ambitions finally landed.